Having recently separated from Holly, Jon visited as often as his schedule allowed. In their rambling conversations, they discovered their deepest bond was their belief that with enough hard work even the most intractable problems could be solved. When he asked her to come to Chicago, she said yes almost before the words were out of his mouth, even though her email to Duke took her a day to write and left her queasy when she hit “Send.” By canceling on such short notice to join Jon at Cancura, she was sacrificing her academic reputation, but for the sake of a medical breakthrough that could—would—change the world.
When it was time to make her announcement in the doctors’ lounge of the hospital, she had an unexpectedly hard time owning it. Even though her new annual salary would be three times what any fellow would be earning and would make a huge dent in her ungodly student loans, she couldn’t help feeling she’d jumped the queue. As she told the other residents about her surprising career move, she played up the clinical aspects of the position, imagining their whispers after she left: Why the fuck did she even apply for a fellowship if she was going to end up working at some start-up?
She couldn’t very well add, Because I’m a doctor who fell in love.
Instead of Olivia Zsofka, a tall, slim man of roughly forty with dark, closely cropped hair and a trimmed beard came through another frosted-glass door behind the security desk.
“Marco Ruiz, director of sales,” he said, extending his hand.
“Jessica Meyers,” she said, returning his handshake and his smile.
“Olivia handles all our onboarding, but she’s under the weather. I’m afraid you’re stuck with me.”
“And you’re stuck with me,” Jessica said, thinking Marco couldn’t have been happy to have a new hire foisted upon him. “Sorry to hear Ms. Zsofka isn’t feeling well.”
“Morning sickness.”
“That can really knock you out,” Jessica said, hoping she sounded like an all-around team player, as suggested in the article she’d read in preparation for her detour into the corporate world, “How to Rock Your First Day on the Job.”
“Do you have kids?” he asked, escorting her through the door and down a hall of windowless doors secured by key card locks.
“Treating them has been more my priority than having them,” Jessica said, partly to address the unspoken universal question when hiring a woman in her thirties, but mostly because it was true—that was, other than the de facto stepchildren she was likely to have sooner rather than later. “So, no.”
Luckily, he was a man, so he simply nodded and didn’t say, You don’t want kids. Really?
And she didn’t have to offer some variation of, My childhood wasn’t altogether conducive to the role modeling necessary for successful parenting.
At the end of the hall, they took an elevator to the top floor. When the doors slid open, she was relieved to see the offices were not all like something out of a high-security science-fiction movie set. Austere, yes, but nicely furnished, and with occasional touches of color.
“Welcome to Cancura,” he said. “Where medicine and miracles meet.”
If the slogan was cheesy, the building was anything but. While it was the opposite of open-plan—she quickly felt lost in the endless hallways, corners, and security doors—Jessica marveled as Marco guided her through the chef-run cafeteria. She gazed out the ample windows at the striking Chicago skyline as he listed the must-tries (the mediterranean chicken pita, pad thai, and chopped salad with shrimp) and what to avoid (anything vegan, but that may just be me). There was a state-of-the-art fitness center, a childcare center with two tasteful breastfeeding rooms (in case you change your mind someday—there it was), and a small theater where Cancura hosted bands, comedians, and motivational speakers. Marco also rattled off the amenities within a one-block walk, which included a convenience store, a dry cleaner, four restaurants (one of them with a Michelin star), and an athleisure store that offered a generous employee discount.
“If there were sleeping accommodations, I don’t think I’d have any reason to go home,” Jessica joked as they boarded the elevator again to go down one floor.
“They’re in the basement,” Marco said.
“But of course,” she replied.
“You know how lab rats love to burrow and build nests deep inside the bowels of a building,” Marco deadpanned.
“And work nonstop,” she said with a smile. She’d certainly spent untold hours in various labs over the years and felt comfortable among test tubes and beakers.
The elevator stopped on the third floor.
“Ready to see where the real magic happens?” he asked with a small smile.
Despite her nerves, she pictured something amazing—the medical- research-lab equivalent of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, a floor- spanning space where a hundred lab-coated workers moved with a sense of happy purpose. Where the potential of ambushing humankind’s greatest killers in their nascent stages provided its own source of illumination.
Instead, they entered a warren of hallways and locked doors, their labels far from illuminating. DISCOVERY. TRANSLATION. INNOVATION. OUTCOMES.
Now it was Jessica’s turn to be deadpan. “Truly magical.”
“Everyone wants to cure cancer, but nobody thinks about the level of security that requires,” Marco said with a chuckle. “It’s not that we don’t want to share our work with the world, but Jon’s investors committed their cash with the understanding that they get to own the process.”
Which, she thought with a twinge of sadness, might be the only way a true breakthrough could happen.
She could practically hear Jon’s voice in her head as Marco swiped his key card to open a door labeled simply RESEARCH.
No one should ever have to look into the eyes of a child’s parent and say, “I’m sorry, we’ve done all we could do.” Ever again.
“I thought you might want to see your new domain as our first-ever director of medical monitoring and consulting,” Marco said.
Jessica felt her cheeks flush. Jon hadn’t mentioned anything about the
